Moving from Excel to a stock app without breaking anything

The spreadsheet did not fail. It did its job right up until your business outgrew it: copies called "v2" and "final" piling up, a column added "temporarily" eighteen months ago, and a stock figure nobody quite trusts enough to order against.

The switch is daunting for a good reason: your catalogue is your working tool. Here is how to do it without stopping the business.

1. Clean up before you migrate, not after

A clean import beats a fast one. In the spreadsheet, first:

• Delete test rows and obvious duplicates.
• Make sure every item has a unique reference.
• Standardise your units: one item in "pieces", another in "pcs" and a third in "U" will become three different units in the app.

You do not need a perfect file. You need a file that is consistent on those three points.

2. Decide what becomes a field, and what becomes a label

This is the structural decision, and you make it once. A good rule:

• Data you enter for every item is a field (reference, name, threshold, price).
• Data that groups the item is a label (main supplier, season, product line).

Fields get filled in; labels get filtered on. Getting it wrong breaks nothing, but it will cost you a rework of your filters later.

3. Set thresholds during the import, not later

This is the most common mistake: import the stock, then tell yourself you will fill in the thresholds "when there is time". That moment never comes, and the stock-out alert, the main reason you installed the app, stays silent.

An approximate threshold is infinitely better than an empty one. Take a normal month's consumption, halve it, and correct as you go.

4. Import in one go, all or nothing

An import that stops halfway leaves a hybrid state nobody can untangle: part of it in the app, part in the spreadsheet, and two versions of the truth that diverge by the next morning.

That is why the Vextory import is all or nothing: while a single row is in error, nothing is saved. You fix the row and run it again. Frustrating on the day, a relief three weeks later.

5. Keep the spreadsheet read-only for a month

Do not delete it. Rename it INVENTORY-ARCHIVE-<date> and make it read-only. It is your safety net while you find your feet, and the fact that it can no longer be edited prevents the worst outcome: two sources drifting apart in silence.

After a month, if nobody has reopened it, the switch has happened.

What you must not lose along the way

A successful migration keeps three things: your references (they are printed on your labels and known to your suppliers), your thresholds (they encode years of hard-won experience), and the knowledge of the people who know which item has been sitting there for two years. Everything else can be rebuilt.